Silvered, damaged, almost un-recognisable, hopeful

[Minty]

Hi All,
I'm new to the site and thrilled to find it! Have been working in Graphic Design for approx 17yrs and now spend most of my time retouching & restoring photo's. Recently I was going through an old box of photo's and came across a very damaged, almost negative in appearance photo - thankfully my dear grandmother had written on the back. I would dearly love to do my best at restoring this photo and would love any suggestions or tips. I have included two images, the first is how it looks as is. The second is my initial adjustments to see what image was underneath.
Kind regards from Australia

[Cameraken]

Hi Minty

Welcome to Retouch Pro

There is some detail in there but the image posted is full of jpeg artefacts. If you work from a higher quality scan then this is restorable.

This tutorial should help you

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=255

(Hint. The Red Channel is the best)

Regards.

Ken.

[lurch]

To get rid of the silvering haze:
http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/pho...tml#post212276

[0lBaldy]

Minty, Welcome to RetouchPRO
You have done a fine job of discovering quit a bit of detail and finding the image. Now your hard work begins.. how to translate that info to a brighter image without losing it.

Seeing as how there is so much info there you might benefit from shooting the photo on a copy stand using a double polarized setup.. (Polarized filters on both lights and a polarized filter on the lens in the opposing angle) This generally works much better than scanning as the polarization allows shooting through the haze .. a sample of the difference between shooting digitally and scanning a silvered image can be found here, and explained farther down in the thread here.

Good luck with your project, you have done well so far and I am sure it is going to turn out well for you.

[Minty]

Thank you all for your advice & suggestions - greatly appreciate you taking the time to help. I have taken the advice on board and given the restoration a go. Attached is my first attempt, would love any suggestions to improve on the image so far. (NB: image size has been reduced for upload to site)
Kind regards

[0lBaldy]

Very Impressive! Great Job!

[Minty]

Thank you 0lBaldy, appreciate the positive feedback. Very nice of you!

[Kraellin]

you've brought out a lot of detail. that's great! it's a bit dark overall, though. try a brightness/contrast adjustment layer, or levels or a shadows/midtones/highlights treatment or some combination thereof